The Devil In the DNA 1-3

[Sky Falls In Thunder]

The Devil In The DNA

1

The Dawnstar Protocols

****It cannot stay. There will be Punishment. The People From the Empty Places put fire in the Father's belly and burnt him screaming to nothing so he cannot punish It, but there will be Punishment. There is always Punishment; the World is made of Punishment. It huddles on the floor behind jagged pieces of the fallen, shattered sky and watches them gather their stolen Breed Things back to them. The air starts to dance and shimmer, they start to return to the Empty Places, the Yesterday Places, in groups of one hand and one finger. It cannot stay. It is better to go to Nothing than to stay. It watches the People From the Empty Places; they take their broken and sick Breed Things First, then the ones in blue cloth while those in red cloth stay till last. It cannot stay, It cannot. The last group starts to shimmer and glow NOWNOWNOW****

Sometimes, just sometimes, these things bring good news, thought Captain James T. Kirk as he reviewed the priority message from Starbase 29. Usually, when message traffic encrypted seven ways to Sunday came, he cringed inwardly with a general expectation of plague, famine, death or Klingons. Or at least something that ate planets. But not this time. Coordinates and a brief message: “USS Avalon has reported in. Requests immediate resupply, engineering & medical assistance. Rig to transport unknown number refugees. USS Enterprise to rendezvous, provide all assistance and escort to safe harbor. Highest priority. USS Avalon reports one prisoner. Case Dawnstar protocols to be followed. Bring my people home, Jim. Cartwright.”

The Avalon had been presumed lost some 4 months before while investigating a series of rather peculiar pirate raids on the fringe of Federation space. Only fragments of her captain's last transmission were received, barely decipherable through what could only have been heavy jamming.

“... I see them. Preparing … engage the enemy....”

No wreckage was found, no ion trails or other technological bread crumbs to provide even the slightest clue as to who the adversary was or what had become of the Avalon. To make matters worse, the Avalon had last reported that they were heading into the sort of anomaly-riddled space that navigators referred to using terms like “hard steering in rough weather,” when Captains were around, and “steering with a bag of piss-drunk Vulcans in your lap” when they weren't.

But the raids - the kidnappings - had ended, and the Avalon hadn't reported in. Newsfeeds played and replayed the (helpfully leaked) recording while assorted Academic Authorities denounced Starfleet's “carelessness” and “irresponsible” actions. Journalists performed their time-honored and sacred rite of lovingly and reverently interviewing that particular sort of “expert” who always had ample time to provide sage commentary regarding this or that crisis but was rarely seen being actually engaged in solving anything. Ships patrolled and searched, colonists huddled in their homes, families waited.

Assorted members of the Federation Council eventually pronounced the region safe and decreed that by their Decisive Steps, they (the politicians) had Ended The Unprecedented Crisis. There were ceremonies involving lighting of candles. Proposals for monuments and vague legislation “to ensure this doesn't happen again.” Fact-finding conferences on Wrigley's. And, of course, speeches were made. The Avalon and her crew had made the ultimate sacrifice. Brave men and women, Federation Values, Commitment to Excellence and kindly don't forget to vote for me come next election.

No one in Starfleet doubted that the Avalon had somehow ended the raids and had been lost ad astra incognita in the process. No one in Starfleet doubted that the crew of the Avalon had sailed knowingly into harm's way to protect the lives of the Federation's citizens. No one in Starfleet doubted that Avalon's crew wouldn’t hesitate to do it all again if they had it to do over and knew the outcome.

What everyone in Starfleet doubted was the explanation the Federation Security Council had pasted together using the scant facts Starfleet had been able to provide. So at quiet, informal gatherings, uniformed men and women solemnly raised glasses to absent friends... and discussed matters in hushed, cautious murmurs.

Orions? The raids were far outside the Orions’ usual hunting grounds, and too many “high-value” potential slaves had simply been cut down rather than taken. Too much in the way of low-bulk, high-value cargo had been left untouched. The profile of the attacks didn't fit that of Klingons, Gorn, Tholians or even Romulans, for that matter. Sometimes an isolated outpost or settlement homestead was found burning with most of the occupants dead where they fell, victims of savagery even battle-frenzied Klingons would consider excessive and dishonorable. Sometimes a freighter was found gutted and wrecked, with most of the crew left as ruined and burnt corpses.

Most of the occupants. Most of the crews.

At other times, people just quietly disappeared in ones and twos. On one occasion, a young woman had vanished from a locked lavatory stall in a colony's command post. And Starfleet captains who were investigating invariably found that the details of who was missing from other attacks were classified, the mantra of “need to know” being invoked. Even the number of the missing was classified and remained so despite the desk-pounding by Commodores and Admirals. Reports from Starfleet vessels investigating and rendering aid to the worlds struck by these raids were seemingly devoured by a black hole somewhere above Starfleet Intelligence, rather than being pooled and distributed to other captains in the area. Captains on good terms with this or that member of Starfleet Intelligence knew only that their contacts shared their frustration and mumbled darkly that “S. I. isn't making the calls on this. Take it up with the Council.”

And now, Kirk thought, we'll get some answers. With a quick stab at the intercom, he opened a ship-wide channel. “This is the Captain speaking. All hands, prepare for deep-space rescue and recovery. I want emergency medical and engineering teams and equipment prepped for short-notice deployment and all available cargo bays rigged for refugee triage and berthing. Department heads to the conference room in one hour. Ladies and gentlemen, we're bringing the Avalon and her crew home.”

The cheering made him proud.

Normally, that glow would last for about 2 minutes. Then the need to do something constructive, anything... would declare all-out war on the rational knowledge that for the moment, he could do nothing but let his people do their jobs without joggling their elbows. He already knew what Scotty would say if he showed his face in Engineering. Before he got both feet in the door, he'd hear a polite and ever-so-friendly “Aye, Cap'n, we got 'er under control, my lads'll be ready ta tackle anythin' she throws at us.”

And Kirk knew from experience that Bones would say the same thing, but much less politely and by no means in as friendly a manner, if he tried to “help” with the Medical team's preparations. He also knew the support staff would handle setting up any empty quarters for refugees with a need for privacy, and prepare the cargo bays and mess facilities for accommodating larger groups. Normally, this would be the part he hated most, hurrying up and waiting while everyone else buzzed about making ready for the task at hand.

Normally.

Case Dawnstar changed all that. There would be plenty for him to worry about in the meantime; of that, James T. Kirk was certain.

Another decisive and captainly stab at the intercom opened a private channel to Security. “Kirk to Giotto.”

"Giotto here, Captain.”

“Commander, we've got some special preparations to make. Report to the conference room immediately, and bring that Andorian girl with you. The nasty one.”

“Right away sir... umm... it would... perhaps you... ah... could refrain from referring to her as a girl, Captain. Call her a 'shen.' Errr....ah... Cultural...ahhhh... stuff... umm.. Captain. My people and I have to spar with her, sir.”


“Commander, am I to understand that she'd be offended if I called her a 'girl', but not 'nasty'?”

“Exactly sir! Thank you sir!” The level of relief in Giotto's voice was in itself somewhat disturbing, Kirk thought as he headed to the conference room. Kirk had to admit that while Crewman Shaikatra performed admirably in any task she was assigned, she also seemed determined at all costs to never, ever allow herself to be promoted or receive any commendation that might put her in danger of becoming an officer. She was also waiting placidly at the entrance to the conference room when he arrived.

Got here faster than Giotto. Girl's fas... Kirk's chain of thought derailed with a screech and a crash as her antenna suddenly twitched and curled back as though she'd bitten into something spoilt. Her head snapped towards him and her eyes narrowed. She showed nearly null on her esper scores, Kirk thought, no way she could... That thought as well crashed to a sudden, jarring demise right next to the last one, this time as a smile spread across her face. It was the sort of smile usually found on a vicious child who has just come into possession of something small and helpless.

Despite himself, Kirk found himself inclined to believe the lower deck's rumors about her poker skills. Maybe she actually could hear other people's cards. And that smile would rattle a Vulcan. She's perfect for this job...

“Captain.” With a nod she stepped in front of the sensor, opening the conference room door, and entered. Kirk noted she moved briskly as she stepped inside and then immediately to the left. He also noted that she didn't assume the room would be empty and peered suspiciously about until she'd verified for herself that no threats to her Captain lurked in the well-lit recesses Conference Room A.

Never one to slack off, that's for sure, he thought. But McCoy and Scotty are right. That g... that SHEN gives people the wiggins.

“Crewman... are those ice knives on your belt standard issue?”

No smile this time, but rather what had to be the best poker face he'd seen outside a Vulcan or a china doll.

“No, Captain. They are cultural artifacts required for certain religious ceremonies among the kethni of my homeworld.”

“I see... Crewman, did you expect to find an enemy in Conference Room One A with whom you would engage in ceremonial single combat?”

“Expect? Not at all, Captain. I am, however, an optimist.”

Fortunately, the door chose this moment to whisk open and admit Lt. Commander Giotto to the conference room.

“Ah, Barry. Sit down. That goes for you too, crewman. We've got an issue to discuss.”

The shen straightened immediately to a position of attention, eyes fixed on a spot on the wall behind Kirk. “Captain, sir, if this is about that poker tournament, it was, after all, one Starfleet Ground Combat instructor who told me a thing worth doing is also a thing worth cheating at...”

“A poker tournament? When? Here on the ship? Why didn't anyone tell me? Wait. You cheated?”

"Not at all, sir. I didn't need to this time. I was just after the rake. Besides, they...” Her mouth suddenly shut with a clop as if it had belatedly decided that in regards to information, this was an occasion when less is more than enough.

"I.... I think I'll keep that in mind if I ever play poker with you, crewman. But that's not what we're here for. Commander Giotto, you're familiar with the Case Dawnstar security protocols, aren't you?”

Giotto stiffened. The incident that had necessitated the creation of those protocols was an acute embarrassment to the Enterprise security team. “Yes, Captain. I am indeed.”

“Good. Crewman Shaikatra, are you?”

“Certainly, Captain. I've studied them, as well as the security logs regarding the Botany Bay incident. Basically, a small group of genetically engineered historical artifacts were let out of the freezer and hijacked the Enterprise...” She halted abruptly upon seeing both Kirk and Giotto's eyes narrow. “Ahh... let me rephrase that... These Augmented Humans displayed strength, stamina and, no offense, intellect superior to those of the average human. These features being owed to a combination of selective breeding and genetic engineering. Up until they were rendered extinct with the destruction of their penal colony on Ceti Alpha V, Starfleet considered them among the greatest potential threats to the Federation. This is something that puzzles me, because there are other species that display physical attributes and intellects greater than humans, yet do not engender the level of fear Case Dawnstar suggests existed in regards to Augmented Humans. And, to be blunt, sir, their greatest strength seems to have been their leader's charisma, a trait for which no one has found a gene.”

Kirk wasn't surprised. The crewman hadn't witnessed Khan's cunning or brutality first-hand, and members of a proud warrior race such as the Andorians often had to see for themselves exactly how tough an opponent really was.

He found himself up and pacing, talking to himself as much as to her.

“Consider this, crewman. The Augments were particularly intimidating to humans for reasons that go beyond their strength, their stamina. They represented a recent and savage period in our history when some of our brightest hopes gave birth to … nightmares. Genetic engineering offered us an end to hunger, an end to sickness, all the things we thought caused war. And then it turned on us, gave us monsters that conquered and enslaved most of our planet. It was only because their arrogance led them to bicker with and betray each other that we were finally able to defeat them. And unlike many alien races with superior attributes, they can reproduce undetected among us, breed us out of existence. All of our best, all of our worst traits. All in one package...”


The crewman sat back, gazing thoughtfully at the captain. A blue fingernail went tick tick tick on the edge of an ice knife.

When she spoke, it was in a quiet, almost subdued, tone. “I understand, Captain. I think we all have our genetic 'boogeymen', and those are more frightening because they aren't merely among us, they are us. I take it you intend to, ah, enhance the Case Dawnstar protocols rather than simply have us implement them as is?”

Kirk leaned forward, fixing Shaikatra and Giotto with a level, determined look. “You take that all the way to the bank, Crewman. Let's get to work.”

Captain's Log, Stardate 2269.153. We're approaching the rendezvous point with the USS Avalon. Once we have her on sensors, I am to break radio silence and coordinate with Captain Granger. Repair and medical crews are primed and ready, and the special security precautions called for by Case Dawnstar are in place, along with some... personal touches. Starfleet has instructed me to transfer and secure the prisoner before initiating relief efforts to our sister ship. Normally, this would seem like an excess of caution, but I've seen what these.... Augments can do. Not again. Not on my ship.

“Approatchink rendezvous coordinates, Keptin.” announced Chekov, his voice rising a little in anticipation.

“Full sensor, sweep, Mr. Spock.” instructed Kirk as a matter of form. He knew perfectly well Spock would anticipate the order and running a thorough scan the moment they reached the proper coordinates, but it was procedure. In only a moment Spock replied “USS Avalon on sensors, Captain. She appears to be alone and is apparently barely capable of sustaining warp 2.”

Kirk leaned forward in his chair, relieved to finally be able to do something other than plan, wait, then revisit his plans and then wait some more. “Take us out of warp, Helmsman. Spock, keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Uhura, can you raise them?”

“Affirmative, Captain. The Avalon is hailing us.”

“Onscreen.”

Captain Charles Granger’s image appeared on the screen. He looked like he'd missed more than a few meals since the last time Kirk had seen him, and probably hadn't had a good night's sleep since the Avalon went missing.

“God, Jim, it's good to see you. Tell me you brought lunch. Something that isn't blue cheese and oatmeal this time. If I never see another protein nib, rat pack or nutri-cracker, I'll die a happy man.” Kirk couldn't help but relax a little. Chuck wouldn't be teasing him about a long-ago survival training exercise gone south if he was danger, although he wasn't shy about making it clear that his people were pretty tired of running on short rations.

“I'll see if the galley can rustle up some tree bark, although if memory serves, it's your turn to bring lunch. I'll see to it after we transfer the
prisoner.”

“Ah. Jim. About that...”

“What? You still have the prisoner secure? Has something happened?”

"No... no... everything's... oh hell. You'll see for yourself when we beam over with the ‘prisoner'. We can chit-chat later, Jim. Let's get this sorted first so we can feed my people. Signal when all those damn protocols are in order and you're ready for us to beam over. I'll be beaming over with the prisoner, my chief medical officer and ummm...yeah… the... prisoner.”

“Very well, Captain. See you in five. Kirk out.”

At his signal, Uhura opened a shipwide channel. “This is the Captain speaking. All hands, prepare for prisoner transfer according to Dawnstar Protocols. You know the drill, people, so let's do this by the numbers.”

As Kirk and Spock moved towards the transporter room, he saw his order carried out with the sort crisp professional efficiency that filled him with pride. Every corridor between the transporter room, turbolift and brig was cleared except for a security detail at each intersection. He strode into the transporter room and saw all was in order. Four security men held at the ready phaser rifles set to heavy stun, Giotto and Shaikatra both holding ready ones that... weren't set to stun. He nodded to Mr. Scott. “Energize when ready.”

“Aye, Cap'n.”

The shimmer of the transporter lit two pads, not three. The one pad held what appeared to be Captain Granger, but the second clearly showed two figures, the larger hunched in close behind the smaller. “Hostage!” barked Giotto and Shaikatra simultaneously, shifting their positions in hopes of getting a clear shot. The security team brought their weapons to bear and even Kirk held his breath wondering what last-minute stunt the cunning Augment had pulled.

The form of Captain Granger finished materializing on one pad, with the medical officer and prisoner on the other. Kirk's jaw dropped. He was expecting any number of things, perhaps a desperate superhuman holding an improvised weapon to the physician's throat or an arm locked about her neck only a few ounces’ pressure from breaking it.

That's what Khan Noonien Singh would have done. This clearly wasn't Khan Noonien Singh.

For one thing, Kirk doubted that Khan had ever, at any point in his career, cowered behind a petite Vulcan doctor barely half his size. Much less while clutching a rag doll in the crook of her arm and what appeared to be a pillowcase half-full of emergency ration bars. The girl was damn near six feet tall, but had that coltish gawkiness that was usually only seen in children around 12 or 13. She was staring fixedly at the floor and looked ready to collapse in terror.

Doctor T'Shia, sometimes instructor at Starfleet Academy, frequent lecturer at the Vulcan Science Academy and current Chief Medical Officer of the USS Avalon eyed the heavily-armed security detail coolly and raised an eyebrow slightly. Without taking her eyes off of the Security detail, she turned slightly and in a most un-Vulcan display of familiarity gently took the whimpering girl's hand in her own.

“Greetings, Captain Kirk. If you are concerned, I am confident that I can restrain her while you summon more guards.”

“Jim, meet Dr. T'Shia, and our guest here goes by 'Sky' near as we can figure. Permission to come aboard?” Captain Granger spoke in the quiet, gentle tones of one trying not to frighten a skittish animal. He clearly wasn't intimidated by the girl, and an amused snort from Crewman Shaikatra told him she didn't regard the prisoner as much of a threat. The shen might have a singular gift for getting under people's skin, but her instincts had proven themselves in the field. For his own part, Kirk was inclined by nature of professionalism to err on the side of caution, but the cringing child on his transporter pad wasn't ringing any alarm bells with him either. Still... security protocols existed exactly for those moments when nobody thought they were needed.

“Granted. Commander Giotto and his detail will see 'Sky' here to...”

“Sickbay.”

The Vulcan doctor had interrupted without the slightest concession to the high premium Vulcans usually placed on formality and proper etiquette. “My patient is no threat, and is under severe emotional distress. The presence of your security detail is heightening her anxiety unnecessarily. She requires medical attention, and I must confer with your Chief Medical Officer regarding her and the women we've rescued from the raiders. If you cannot provide me with adequate medical facilities for her, please return us to the Avalon immediately before we place any more unnecessary stress upon her.” Her face was lined with fatigue and had that greenish pallor of a Vulcan who was at the end of their rope physically... but a cold, hard light burned in her eyes. Considering the stress she must have been under for the past weeks as well as his own read on the girl, Kirk chose to let slip the impropriety of giving instructions to a ship's Captain.

“Very well. Ensign Saunders, if you'll see to our... guest's... luggage?” The brawny Security Ensign stepped forward and extended a hand to take the pillowcase from the girl, who squeezed her eyes shut and seemed to drawn in on herself even further, turning her face away from him as though she expected a blow and didn't want to see it coming. As the ensign reached for the bag, the doctor's glare was taking a sharper edge when crewman Shaikatra snapped, “Belay that Ensign. Take my rifle; I'll tend to the kid's bag.” Did I get demoted to Cabin Boy and nobody told me? Am I now the only person on this ship who doesn't get to give orders? Kirk thought, temper rising. He could hear Giotto's teeth grinding and knew that the Security Chief would be tearing a strip of ass off of a certain protocol-ignoring crewman at the first opportunity. So long as he leaves plenty for me to tear off. Kirk turned to glare at the Andorian security rating, but she was as cool and smooth as the ice of her homeworld as she safed her rifle and thrust it into the baffled ensign's hands. Shaikatra then moved slowly up onto the transporter pad, gently reaching for the girl's bag.

“I just need to take a quick look, then you can have it back, okay?” she asked. As tightly as the girl had been gripping the pillowcase, Kirk was surprised to see her release it into the Andorian crewman's possession without any sort of resistance. Shaikatra took a few steps back and knelt, carefully examining the contents of the pillowcase. “Ration bars. Lots and lots of ration bars. The old kind, even. The ones that taste like somebody tried to make boots out of sawdust.” The shen rose, and moving with exaggerated care, handed the bag back to the girl who mutely accepted it. “Can I take a look at your doll? What's her name?” The girl murmured something, a faint church mouse whisper as Shaikatra examined the doll. “Princess Widdershins, you say? That's a lovely name. Okay, I need to check your pockets now; I'll try not to tickle.” Shaikatra kept up a cheery, one-sided banter as she conducted a pat-down of the girl that was thorough enough to make Kirk feel a little awkward. Yet both the girl and T'Shia relaxed visibly, and Kirk found himself wondering Who is this, and what have they done with the crewman voted Most Likely To Cause A Minimum Of Three Diplomatic Incidents Before Winding Up In A Penal Colony, and do I even want to know, much less want her back?

“She's clean, sir. With your permission, I'd like to help the doctor here get her to Sickbay. I think we can manage with just Ensign Garov and me.” The husky Tellarite security officer at least had sense enough to remember who was actually in charge and turned to Kirk, his snout wrinkled and head cocked to one side inquisitively like a dog who’d just heard a new noise for the first time.

Kirk eyed the girl for a moment. Her features were refined and aristocratic, yet not quite delicate. She had dusky skin and raven black hair with a hint of red highlights. “Sky” could have stepped right out of an old Orientalist museum painting from Earth's antiquity. She looked as though she'd be right at home carrying a clay jar of water on her head, swathed in brilliantly-hued silks and chattering merrily with the other girls... or equally at home brooding on a Sultana's throne and coldly deliberating the fate of some unfortunate slave or Crusader.

What caught his attention were her eyes. Brilliant green, the sort of eyes that should be shining with wit and humor, sparkling with a pure joy in life itself. Instead Kirk saw something else there. Something he'd seen plenty of times in history-book pictures, but had seen for the first time in living, breathing human beings when he was 14 years old on Tarsus IV. It was in the eyes of old lady Sato's daughter and her children as Kodos' Revolutionary Militia pulled them from their homes and marched them, along with some 4000 other gaunt colonists, out into the freezing darkness beyond the colony's perimeter. It was the sort of burnt-out hopelessness that meant a person was no longer capable of anything beyond a sort of resigned despair that left them unable to resist whatever was coming next.

“Very well. Please take...” he rolled a word around in his mind for a moment, and thought about her eyes. Kirk decided that the word “prisoner” suddenly had a rancid and foul taste to it and could see why Granger felt the same way. “...the young lady... to sick bay. See to any requests the good doctor here makes, and then report to me whenever Commander Giotto decides he's finished... discussing... certain matters with you.” And pray to whatever you consider holy you've got a good enough explanation for that little stunt to save your belligerent yet shapely blue ass from my boot.

Rather than using the intercom, he flipped open a communicator, and manually coded it to a pre-arranged frequency. “Kirk here. Tell the security details to stand down; the Dawnstar Protocol is no longer required.”

Spock answered, and the unspoken curiosity in his voice was something anyone who hadn't known him for years would miss. “As you wish, Captain. Does this mean we shall be enjoying our usual chess game this evening then?”

“Negative, Spock. I'm afraid we're going to have to put that on hold for a few nights, I suspect. Kirk out.”

Sitting in the center chair on the bridge where he had been watching the entire odd little drama on the main screen, Spock considered the situation briefly simply to ensure he hadn't missed some small detail. The Captain had used the proper, pre-arranged frequency and provided the correct response indicating he was under no duress. Therefore Spock began issuing stand-down orders to each of the security details, using yet another series of pre-arranged, dedicated frequencies and challenge/response protocols. The young human on the transporter pad was most definitely not what they had been expecting. He was certain Captain Granger's report would be quite fascinating.

After verifying with Granger that nobody was likely to come tearing in at hot pursuit, Kirk ordered the Enterprise teams to mate up with their counterparts aboard the Avalon and proceed with the recovery plans. The next several hours were a blizzard of reports, comparisons thereof, and fine tuning adjustments to the rescue plan. The Avalon was barely spaceworthy, her condition cheerfully described by Mr. Scott as “aye, she'll probably not blow up on us too much, most likely willna' anyway, but we can get 'er right enough ta continue on 'er own. Poor lassie'll be spendin' some quality time in'a fleetyards though, she will.” He'd expedited the repairs by having assorted supplies and equipment pre-positioned for transport with priority on “all'a the thing's I'd be hard pressed ta fix a ship w'out, and most likely ta run out a’ first.” He sounds happier than a tribble in a salad bar, Kirk thought with a grin as he heard Scotty's voice shifting from concern to enthusiasm about the challenge at hand.

Engineers, he had determined, were only happy when they had something to fix. Lacking something broken, they would proceed to “improve” things until something broke, “incidentally” giving them something to fix. In this case, there was plenty of joy to go around for all the engineers, as it would be at least a few days before the ship would be able to proceed. Both captains had agreed that once the most urgent systems were at least made safe to operate, the pace of repairs would be slowed to allow Granger's people some much-needed rest. The possibility of catastrophic failure in equipment could be handled by replacement and repairs, but the possibility of catastrophic human error by an exhausted and under-nourished crew was something only some decent rest and hot meals could avert.

Medical found its services in almost as high a level of demand, tidying up the results of “meatball surgery” that the Avalon's medical staff had been forced to adopt given the number of casualties, refugees, and damage to their medical facilities. They had beamed aboard dozens of refugees and “walking wounded” who were being transferred to the Enterprise not only because it was less likely to fall apart any time soon, but to relieve some of the strain on the Avalon's wheezing and sputtering life-support system. Kirk had time to note that the rescued colonists were all human females, with the exception of one young Vulcan woman who had been actually shuttled to the Enterprise because her injuries apparently left her too unstable to transport.

Not to be outdone, the ship's steward saw to it that Services stepped up to the plate in quartering the battered and traumatized refugees and supplying fresh food to the crew of the Avalon, taking a certain prim delight in wordlessly reminding certain other branches of the crew of the importance of a hot meal to crew efficiency and morale and thus wasn't something to be sniffed at.

While all the pieces settled in to motion, Captain Granger had refused even a cup of coffee until he knew his crew's needs were taken care of. Only when he'd confirmed with every one of his department heads that each section was eating did he allow Kirk to escort him to the ship's mess. The tables there were mainly occupied by some of the more battered but mobile members of Granger's crew and several groups of women Kirk presumed to be the rescued colonists. He felt a cold lump form in his stomach as he took them in. The colonists were all roughly between the ages of 14 and 30 and clad in a mix of those god-awful issue jumpsuits and mismatched bits of what Kirk suspected to be civilian clothes donated by the Avalon's crew. The women tended to cluster at the tables in the corners and edges of the room. Many looked like they couldn't quite believe their ordeal was over...and a few simply stared into space as they mechanically ate. One rather delicate and pretty young lady simply sat with her back pressed into a corner, holding an orange and weeping silently while some of the older women hovered protectively about her.

A tall, rangy woman of about 30 caught Kirk's eye and mouthed a silent “thank you” with a small gesture to one of the several platters of fruit distributed throughout the room. Kirk realized that the ship's botanist must have ruthlessly plundered her hydroponics garden to provide this extra touch of hospitality and comfort. Kirk was impressed, considering that last month the normally mild-mannered botanist had demonstrated her zero tolerance for “locusts” and had used a watering can to beat near-senseless a hungry crewman foolish enough to think he could get away with cadging a snack from “her” garden when nobody was looking. Kirk decided he'd have to make a point of putting a letter of commendation in the botanist's file despite the now infamous “Battle of Locust Gardens” incident.

Granger made a point of visiting each table and introducing Kirk to his battered crewmen as well as some of the refugees who were present. A pat on the shoulder here, an inquiry about how an injury was healing there, but with the rescued women he was more restrained in his body language, careful to allow them to maintain a larger bubble of personal space. Finally Granger allowed himself to be served a bowl of stew and some of what everyone but Doctor McCoy considered to be cornbread. He sat for a moment staring at it as though he'd forgotten what it was there for.

“You take good care of your people, Chuck. But you've got to take care of yourself to look out for them. I might start stealing some of your engineers if you pass out on me.”

Granger managed to shoot him as venomous a look as one can with a mouthful of cornbread and beef stew on his chin. Washing it down with half a glass of milk, Granger fired back “You even try that, and it'll be pistols at dawn, Jimmy boy. God, this is so good. I'll give you three engineers for your steward. And let you use me as a character reference at your next court martial.”

Kirk eyed the rescued colonists for a few minutes, letting Granger polish off his bowl of stew before quietly saying “Slavers.”

“Not just slavers, Jim. They were Augments, all right... but they were looking for breeding stock. That's what the Security Council wanted to keep under wraps, to 'prevent undue concern.' All the kidnap victims were young women of what you could call 'breeding age', and they were all human except that poor Vulcan girl. God help me, it's like something from a b-grade holo-drama like 'Romulus Needs Women.' I've read your logs and the official report about Khan, Jim. We were going to be one of the ships that was to ensure the quarantine around Kahn's little empire wasn't violated, at least until Ceti Alpha V did us all a favor when it decided to crap the bunk and explode. And I'd say these guys were a new and improved model. More like those Soong Augments that Archer ran into back in the old days, but possibly tweaked some beyond that.”

“That bad?” Kirk asked, taking a halfhearted bite of his chicken sandwich. He had a thousand questions but knew Granger was in no shape for a proper debriefing. He'd let him ramble at his own pace to get a feel for the shape of the situation then go over Granger's logs and report while his hag-ridden fellow captain got some rest. Now that he knew there was no immediate danger to his ship, the details could be sorted later.

“Honestly Jim, I'd rather fight Klingons and Gorn than those monsters. Strong and fast. Stun just pissed them off. Saw one literally tear the arm off one of my men. We quit using stun then. They were honest-to-god berserkers. Every last one of them crazy as a mugato with a pain-stick up its ass. The men, anyway, and thank God for that. The women, well, they were pretty much docile, scared, and utterly uneducated. They just cowered down and covered their eyes, then scurried away when they thought we weren't looking. The prisoners tell me they were called “Breed Things” and were pretty much forbidden from acting like anything but. Speaking, names, clothing, anything resembling sentience was punished brutally and gleefully.”

Granger motioned for the steward to bring him another bowl of stew and some dessert, and he took a few bites before continuing. “Here's the weird thing, Jim. They're goddamn geniuses, with some pretty advanced technology. That kid in sickbay pretty much learned Standard just listening to the other prisoners before we rescued them, and had it down well enough to read at a teenager's level after about 3 weeks with us. But despite high quality stuff in their noggins, it's like they were too arrogant and too stark raving mad to bother maintaining their defensive systems. Like it was beneath them or something. They had a pretty impressive civilization once, but they must have bombed themselves back to the Stone Age. Okay, not the stone age because they still had their gate-thing and ships, but it was all just falling apart and their biosphere's completely slagged.”

Granger's cornbread mopped up the last fugitive bits of stew and he was silent for a long moment.

“Anyway, imagine Khan Noonien Singh, Jim... but with the soul of Caligula. Squatting in the ruins of a once magnificent palace, drinking and passing around some captured village girls. Monsters. What we dealt with were a few dozen, raiding in small, fast, cloaked ships to capture 'breeding stock' to rebuild their empire. Never mind that they had immense gene banks already and the technological means to grow all the kids they wanted to in bottles. It's like they had to do it on the backs of those poor women or it just wasn't worth doing. Goddamn Caligula, Jim. We might actually have gotten all of the men, but they had more automated defense craft howling in at us, so I had to get the prisoners and un-ass the area of operation without doing a proper mop-up. Their women and some girls scattered into the ruins... I had to leave them behind, Jim. God forgive me, but if I'd had a planet-buster to drop on them, I would have used it, just to make sure those poor kids weren't going to be left in the hands of more of those devils.”

Kirk saw the grief and shame in Granger's eyes and understood that, Prime Directive or not, some things you just couldn't leave alone out of “respect for differing cultural values.” He took a pull of his coffee. “Chuck, you're going to have your hands full with debriefings and a refit, but I can take the Enterprise back and see what we can do for those kids.”

Granger shook his head, chasing bits of pie around his plate with little enthusiasm, and ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to focus. “I wish it were that simple, Jim. But you know what that area of space is like. A navigator's nightmare to begin with... but those 'supermen' had come through some sort of artificial anomaly to get here. God only knows where... or when... that planet actually is relative to here. Those arrogant bastards just left the door open, so sure that nobody could find them or that they could handle anyone who did. We only found them because Sky... the kid... showed some of the prisoners how to get out of the breeding pens...yeah, that's right, breeding pens... she wanted to show them how to steal more food, you see. If you can call the sludge they fed the prisoners 'food', that is. That tall lady there... she's Tatiana Romanova from the Novy Pskov colony. Settled here on the fringe. Anyway, she found a room where the raiders had piled up any weapons and personal gear from their victims. Just tossed it in a corner and left the door open. Tricorders, communicators, med kits, phasers... Tatiana... she was a commo tech, and managed to get a derelict transmitter station running on a federation band. We picked her signal up, barely, and followed it through the anomaly. When I saw what was on the other side, I left this crazy engineer rating I'd borrowed from Starbase 39 on the station that generated the anomaly. With about a dozen photon warheads to make sure that whether we made it out or not, that door was going to be slammed for good. On the way back through, he disengaged the deadman and set the timer and we beamed him aboard. The station went up as we cleared the anomaly, and it collapsed behind us.”

Kirk eyed the tall woman who was still mother-henning some of the dazed rescuees. “Let me guess. When you hit the beach, she and some of her flock started shooting the sons-of-bitches in the back? I like her already. Also like to have a word with the recruiter who let that one slip past Starfleet. What did that engineer rating think of the plan?” Starfleet had missed out big time when it failed to recruit an officer of Romanova's apparent caliber.

Granger grinned. “You know engineers. It was his idea. Said he wasn't even supposed to be here anyway. At heart, I think they just love blowing stuff up, and only learn to fix it so they can know how to blow it up better. I swear, when as we cleared the gate and he hit the remote trigger he actually said 'Hey, y'all... watch this!'”

Kirk sat back, considered another slice of pie. Considered his next physical, and McCoy's sadistic food plans, and decided not to chance it. “So what about the girl? The superhuman I was convinced was going to try to conquer the Federation all on her own? She helped the prisoners so they'd take her with them?”

“Nothing so cheerful, Jim. She didn't understand that there was any other place to escape to. Food deprivation was something used to keep the prisoners docile, and as a tool of petty cruelty. Not even a 'be good, get food' sort of conditioning, just another bit of random viciousness. She just wanted to show those hungry, scared women how they could get a little more food from the vats. During the raid, she hid behind some wreckage where we blew the roof.... whatever they build out of, we can't transport through it without cracking the lid...and then jumped into the transporter beam with one of the medics when we beamed out. Scared the hell out of everyone, but it worked out okay. Jim, she had no comprehension of escape, of transporters taking you to other places. She thought we were 'going to nothing,” said “it is better to go to nothing than to stay a Breed Thing here.' So I guess in a way she thought she was escaping. Doctor T'Shia says the poor kid's been pretty much beaten and ...abused... since she could walk. She still can't wrap her head around the idea that people aren't going to start hitting... or using... her.”

Kirk sat forward, caught his friends eyes. “Chuck, I'll see she's treated properly. She'll be safe here, and I'll see to it that Starfleet's notified that we don't have some new rogue Kahn on our hands, just a scared kid. She'll be okay. Bones is a pretty good shrink and has run into some rough stuff. Between him and your doctor, she's in good hands. We'll see what ideas they have for finding some sort of fostering for her for the long term. Now, you get some rest. I need to chew over your reports and I'll need you fit to fight come alpha shift when we get into all the wonderful paperwork getting your ship put back together's going to generate.”

She is quite puzzled. These People let her have all the food she wants, and they don't hit her or take the food back. Nor do they hit their Breed Things, who talk and look them in the eye and show no fear of Punishment. Some of the New People here still frighten her. The Patriarch of this “Enterprise” they keep talking about smelled fighty...no, she corrected herself... “aggressive” is the proper word. He was very angry when the blue Breed Thing spoke and looked at her food, but he didn't hit her, the blue one, or anybody. Perhaps blue means one doesn't get hit. She would study hard and see if she could learn blue, but she suspected it was like being a Person or a Breed Thing, that one had to be born that way. T'Shia told her this place is safe, that nobody will ever hit her again or take her food. The Person in blue cloth, the Patriarch? of this “sickbay” touched her with machines and spoke with T'Shia, and then began to speak very quietly and insistently to himself about “the indications.” He also began to smell very, very angry so she hid her eyes and waited to be hit. But he never hit her. T'Shia spoke quietly with him, and he apologized, and T'Shia said “The cause is sufficient, Doctor. The cause is sufficient.” These People want her to study and learn more Words, even to Speak them, so she will do so because if they are happy with her, then perhaps they will continue to not hit her and keep letting her have food. But first, she will carefully hide some of her food, because one never could tell.
 

[Sky Falls In Thunder]

2


Plomeek Soup For The Soul


Over the next week things proceeded as well as Kirk could realistically hope for them to, which is to say they proceeded rather slower than he liked. The Avalon was up to maintaining stable Warp 4.5 and Scottie had hopes of getting her up to Warp 5 in the next 10 days or so, but they were still deep in what McCoy referred to as "Indian Country." Unknown space that was not only beyond the fringe of Federation space, but also an area relatively unexplored by any of her allies or trading partners. Normally Kirk would be thrilled to be this far out in the Big Unknown... or for that matter, just this far from Starfleet brass. But in this case the experience was more nerve wracking than exhilarating. Crawling along with a crippled ship while carrying a load of refugees tended to put a damper on one's sense of adventure or desire to encounter strange new races and phenomena.

After no small amount of "spirited discussion", Kirk had finally surrendered to the logic of transferring all of the refugees to the Enterprise and accepting the plan according to which, should they run afoul of something or someone dangerous enough to threaten both ships, the Avalon would play Leonidas while Kirk made like a Dunkirk fisherman ferrying refugees from harm's way. Kirk understood the logic of it on an intellectual level. The Avalon could never outrun an adversary capable of threatening both her and the Enterprise. He knew that the safety of the civilians he carried came before ego and pride, and even the shame of leaving an injured ship behind to delay pursuit... but what the mind understands and what the gut can accept are often different things. So after an argument Kirk knew he would... and should... lose, he agreed to the plan…once Granger agreed to accept volunteers from the Enterprise to fill some of the empty chairs in Security and Engineering.

Kirk was finally in a position to deal with less critical matters such as fine tuning the details of settling in his refugees and deciding what to do with the large-but-mousey Augment girl currently guesting in his sickbay. He sat in Conference Room B sipping coffee and pushing figures around on a data slate, trying to find a way to provide more warm bodies for the Avalon without creating any critical shortages on his own ship. He was finally ready to admit defeat when the informal conference's attendees began making their way in. Doctor T'Shia and Spock were apparently ganging up on Bones, their unstoppable logic battering at his immovable stubbornness. Trailing a bit behind them was the woman who was the unofficial leader of the rescued prisoners and bringing up the rear was the Enterprise's Chief of Security, Lt. Commander Giotto.

Miss Romanova was actually smiling a little while watching this new interpretation of the Bones & Spock Show, now that she had developed a working and comfortable familiarity with the players. She was still jumpy, prone to bouts of haunted melancholy and bursts of white-knuckled, silent rage but Kirk was confident she would heal in time. He had no doubt that her unofficial role as Senior Prisoner during her captivity and post-rescue role of mother hen/foreman/chaplain/drill sergeant provided a sense of purpose that served as the bedrock of her own stability. He also knew that McCoy would be quietly, subtly, working to prepare her for the time when her charges would begin going their separate ways. For her the hardest part would be when she had nobody to look after, and finally had to tend to her own hurts.

Yeoman Rand provided the squabbling doctors and Giotto with their preferred beverages as everyone settled in, but allowed Kirk to pour Romanova a glass of hot tea from the samovar the ship's steward had borrowed from Chekov. It was not a gesture designed to convey pity or condolence, but one of respect from one leader to another. Tatiana Romonova might never have been in Starfleet nor risen beyond the rank of a technician sergeant in a podunk colony militia, but she had led her people through Hell and come back with trophies. She nodded and accepted the glass, stared at the delicate silver filigree of the holder... and then slipped into some memory of a home that was most likely a burnt and broken ruin. She shook it off with a visible effort.

"Thank you, Captain. And thank you again for all of the work you and your crew have done to make my girls feel at home. It seems as though every member of your crew has stopped by with some gift or gesture of kindness. We are all very grateful."

“Well, if anything comes to mind, let us know. It’ll be a couple weeks before it’s safe for any lengthy communications, but we’ll contact your assorted homeworlds as soon as we can. Now, the first order of business is the young Vulcan woman. T’Ren, I believe? I understand she was injured in defense of the other captives and is comatose.”

Romanova nodded. “Catatonic, captain. These ‘supermen’ took her by mistake. Their only interest was in human breeding stock, they regarded non-humans as ‘genetic filth.’ They were going to just kill her out of hand when their leader, this ‘Patriarch’ decided they should keep her for ‘practice.’ That’s what they called it. ‘Practice.’ You could say she drew their fire. She mocked them, refused to cower or cry out. She stood so proudly before them. Of course, this enraged them and they singled her out for … special attentions. At night in the pens, we begged her to stop… but she quietly insisted that since she was more physically and mentally resilient than we were, that it was … only logical… for her to distract them from us for as long as she could. Eventually, they tired of the game, decided she was no fun. Then they started taking the other girls and left her alone. And... she… she…”

“She saw no logic in continuing.” Spock said quietly.

Doctor T’Shia nodded. “Indeed. She has withdrawn deep into her own mind, Captain. I am competent Healer, but I can hope only to stabilize her and ease her suffering. I have only been able to risk light, surface contact with her, insufficient to truly begin her healing. To fully recover she will require extensive sessions in the care of Healers more skilled and experienced than I. It will, in all likelihood, take months for her to find her way back, to repair her damaged self. I have chosen to presume this state was her intent rather than death because it does not seem that she made an effort to stop her own heart.”

An uncomfortable silence began to stretch out when McCoy shifted uncomfortably and asked “How would you know the difference? Look for signs of heart and brain damage?”

“Correct, Doctor McCoy. Even a failed attempt would have left damage to the heart muscles and some level of brain damage. The lack of either of those suggest to me that she hoped to be rescued.”

“Doctor, what if the signs indicated otherwise?” Kirk asked.

The petite Vulcan doctor looked at him levelly. “Tal-Shaya. I am grateful I was not called upon to perform that duty. Rather, I intend to perform a deep mind-meld to attempt to reach her, to let her psyche know that she is now safe, that it is over. The procedure is not without risk, I will require Mr. Spock’s assistance, to act as an anchor lest I be pulled into madness with her. Now that my patients are in good hands, it is appropriate that I now do what I must for T’Ren.”

“Doctor, no offense… but you are exhausted. Mentally and physically. Why don’t we recess until you can get some rest?”

“There is no offense where none is taken, Captain. And it would be illogical for me to deny that which is obviously true. But it is possible she is even now re-living her experiences, in a ‘loop’ if you would. I cannot leave her in such a state for any longer than is necessary, thus I prefer to resolve the current issues in order to focus properly on the procedure. With your permission, I will be able to perform the meld this evening. After which, I shall rest sufficiently to satisfy even Doctor McCoy.”

“Spock?” Kirk glanced at his first officer.

“As the Healer has stated, there is a level of risk but I consider it to be acceptable. I will be acting as both an anchor and a ‘relief valve’ during the process. And I will be able to sever the connection should it become necessary.”

Kirk eyed Spock with a certain level of suspicion. When Spock cited a level of risk without providing the odds, it usually meant he was trying to downplay the risk without actually lying about it. But to order Spock to leave the Vulcan girl in a literal psychic hell would be unacceptable. He could only trust his friend’s judgment. And it didn’t take The Cochrane Prize to figure out that Doctor T’Shia would proceed with or without help now that her other patient’s care was guaranteed.

“Very well. Proceed as soon as you’re both ready, but keep me informed. And since M’Benga’s keeping your sickbay warm on the Avalon, I want Bones to be there as a spotter.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Now, about our other guest. Starfleet has some particularly stringent standing orders regarding any Augments and their descendants. I’ve thrown most of them out the airlock, but I’m going to need to be able to justify doing that. I need to know more about her. Not just what she is, but who she is if I'm going to be able to help her to the best of my ability. I made the mistake of trying to introduce myself to her a couple days ago, just to put her mind at ease and get a feel for her. She hid under Doctor McCoy's desk until I left, and my ears are still burning from the combined scolding Nurse Chapel and Yeoman Rand gave me. So. Let's start at the beginning. Miss Romanova, tell me about Miss Sky Falls In Thunder."

"Yes, Captain." Romanova closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. "Sky... she was, you could say, one of the natives. And that's not her name, not really. She never had one, I guess. When Charles... when Captain Granger was trying to interview her, she couldn't grasp the idea of a 'Breed Thing' having a Name, and had only a rude grasp of our language. We thought she was saying her name was "Sky Falls In Thunder", but she was just trying to describe something about when the raid blew the roof of the bunker system they all lived in. Anyway...'Sky' kind of stuck. She's clearly related to the nekulturny swine that took us. Physically, at least, the family resemblance is strong but she's nothing like them. Sky tried to help in what limited ways she could understand. She tried to show us how to hide, and when not to hide.” Romanova’s focus faded for a moment and her normally faint accent thickened. “Trick was to hide well enough to not convenient when they came looking for someone, but not so inconvenient that they ... became frustrated and angry. That was when they would hurt you worse.” Romanova paused and pretended to take a few sips of her tea while she regained her composure. The accent receded somewhat but she was still dropping articles and Kirk feared she might shatter the glass in her hand. “Shy showed us how to sneak out of pens to steal extra food from vats. Security was, as Captain Granger put it... 'fat and happy.' Was how I found transmitter station and weapons. She never fought them... none of their women even knew how. But I tell you this. There is no way she, nor any of other women or children there were involved in those bastard's raids. They were all victims, they just happened to be born there. Here. Captain Granger told me there were things you should see for yourself to understand her."

She inserted a data cartridge into the conference room's monitor. The brief distraction of finding the right file allowed her to fully regain her calm. "These are from Dr T'Shia's early interviews. When Captain Granger or any of the men tried to interrogate her, she just scurried to a corner and hid her eyes, but with any women or non-human crew members she was ok, if timid." Tapping a few keys, Romanova found the recording she was looking for. Kirk leaned forward to watch. On the screen was an image of the Avalon's brig. Dr. T'Shia sat in one of the cells while the girl peeked at her from under a blanket in the corner of the cell.

"Do you have a mother or father?" asked the Vulcan doctor in a gentle, calming tone.

"The Father is gone to nothing. They put fire in his belly and he fell into nothing and screamed and was nothing with the Brothers."

"What about a mother?"

"It hasn't stolen that Word, never heard it to steal. What is 'mother'?"

"A female... Was there a female who cared for you? Who fed you?"

"There was a Breed Thing that gave it food when it was small, but the Father and the Brothers stopped it."

"Stopped her? Please clarify. Did they stop her from feeding you?"

"No. It got old enough to walk to the vats to get food then so the Breed Thing didn't bring it food any more. One day the Father and the Brothers said that the Breed Thing was used up and no use, no fun. So they hit it with hands and pushed it down, they put foots on it until it stopped."

"Stopped? Stopped struggling?"

The figure under the blanked shrugged. "Until it stopped. Then they took it away to the vats." Her tone indicated that in her childhood such events were as normal and routine as going to the library or taking a nap.

Seeing that the recording had made its point, Romanova skipped to another section. "It didn't take long for Captain Granger to decide she wasn't going to conquer his ship any time soon and allow Doctor T'Shia move Sky to Sickbay, or what was left of it anyway. She kept thinking someone was trying to trick her, get her to speak out loud or do any of the other things they punished their women... punished us... for doing. It took weeks for her to understand that Captain Granger and the other men on the ship weren't going to start hitting and abusing her." She keyed the next segment to start.

The girl was standing in the dim lighting of ship's night, in one of the small, semi-private areas in the Avalon's sickbay. Well, private except for the security recorders Granger had installed. Kirk nodded to himself. That was one of the few parts of the Dawnstar Protocols he himself had stuck with. Bones had raised all manner of sour hell until Kirk put his foot down and reminded him that it might be McCoy's Sickbay, but that Sickbay was on Kirk's ship, and that the cameras would help him study his patient when she was alone and thus possibly provide better treatment for her obvious emotional and social issues. Bones relented, but still managed to give each camera the stinkeye every time he passed it. Kirk motioned for Romanova to play the recording.

On the screen the girl was wearing one of those godawful jumpsuits crewman used when crawling around in Jeffries tubes and scrubbing plasma conduits. All the Avalon could come up with considering her recyclers were down for the count. Someone had set up a mirror in the medical cubicle, and some other improvised decorations one would expect for a young lady’s room. Sky was turning this way and that, trying to look at herself from every angle. And grinning. She was swishing and by God preening like a debutante who had just taken delivery of her very first ball gown. Suddenly she froze, head cocked as though she had heard something out in the main area of sickbay. Moving with surprising speed she stripped out of the jumpsuit and scampered to the corner where she climbed up on the biobed. Popping an access panel off of the wall above the monitor, she quickly bundled the jumpsuit into a small ball and stuffed it into the bulkhead. It appeared that several stacks of ration bars were already there to keep it company. Then she hopped off of the bed, snatched up a blanket and curled up in the corner with the blanket over her head.

On this T'Shia commented with that sort of dry Vulcan understatement that conveyed a small bit of ironic amusement to those who knew what to listen for. "She has displayed remarkable problem-solving capability given her profound ignorance and lack of any sort of education. I have discovered an impressive number of heretofore unknown places in my sickbay one can hide ration bars. When we get to a spacedock and begin repair and refitting procedures, I suspect that the technicians will discover several more."

Kirk chuckled. “Bones, what can you and your colleague tell me about her genetic augmentation?"

"Well Jim, I've run a full physical work up of her, but don't really have the facilities to tell exactly how much is tinkering, and how much is selective breeding. My equipment here are limited for this sort of thing, but I'd say her DNA looks to be all human. I reckon she's about as tweaked as she could be and still be expected to breed true with unAugmented humans without medical intervention. Gut bacteria is all Earth norm, if of the best imaginable models. Her immune system is such I'd be surprised if she ever caught a cold and it would take some pretty appalling conditions and neglect for an injury to go septic. Blood gas exchange ratio is remarkable. Her reflexes are amped up, as is muscle density. Lots of quick-twitch musculature, and much better endurance for every muscle type. Remember what I said about Khan? That he could probably lift us both with one arm? I'd expect the same of her when she fills out some, which’ll be about a week given how much she eats. Anyway… she's definitely been tinkered with more than Khan was. My guess is, if she's a product of any Earth based technology we know about, I'd say Captain Granger’s right: she's closer to the Soong type Augments that gave Captain Archer problems back in the day, but maybe even a more polished model.”

McCoy took a pull of his coffee and there was a flare of barely controlled indignation in his eyes.

"Jim, her bone density is impressive... and that makes her medical history that much more disturbing. She isn't going to break a damn thing falling off the swingset or down a flight of stairs. It would take determined effort to break something. But she's had more bones broken than not, fingers, facial bones, and ribs seem to be the repeated favorites. Evidence of repeated soft tissue damage… elsewhere. All repaired expertly, better than I could do back at Starfleet Medical, but the traces are there. Jim, they took extra effort to make sure she stayed pretty."

Kirk allowed his mind to shy away from that fact and it's ugly implications for the moment. "Bones. How old do you think she is?"

"Hard to tell, Jim. Her telemeres, well, they're all goofy.” Spock raised an eyebrow at McCoy’s terminology, but must have decided that it was just too easy a shot to bother with. McCoy shot him a glare anyway before continuing. “Her physical development would appear put her at 14 or 15, but based on what I know of how much you can reasonably accelerate maturation without causing deformity, the average size of her people and the growth recorded in the last few months through now... I'd guess she's between 9 and 11 years old at most. She's eating like a horse and growing like a weed."

Kirk nodded. “Socialization? Education?” McCoy’s anger faded as they moved to areas where he felt he had done some good.

“Proceeding pretty well, Jim. We’ve learned that a great deal of her anxiety is caused by olfactory cues. All of her senses are at the high end of the bell curve, some a little over the line even. When a human male gets angry or aroused, she processes the scent as a danger sign.”

“Just human males?”

McCoy smiled brightly. “Yep. Non-humans have different biochemistry, different pheromones. Jim, I’d been meaning to talk to you about this for a while, and I guess now’s as good a time as any. Boys and girls are different, Jim, and when they get to a certain age their bodies start to change even more…”

“Thank you. Bones. I think… I’ve… got a handle on that. Boys and girls smell different. Different pH and all that. Thank you for that lesson.”

“Glad to help, Jim. Any time you have any more questions on the subject… feel free to ask Spock.”

Kirk managed to fire Bones a dirty look, but it was pretty half-hearted. He knew he’d walked right into that one.

Satisfied with himself, McCoy continued. “Doctor T’Shia’s come up with a modification of an old Vulcan remedy that Vulcan females use to dampen their sense of smell when serving with humans. Diluted, and adjusted somewhat it helps de-sensitize Sky a little. Not too much, of course. We don’t want to panic her by cutting off one of her senses, and she’ll need to learn to deal with it eventually. Anyway, she’s a quick study. Never forgets anything you tell her and could drive Spock to distraction with her questions. Her biggest problems are context. It’s hard to understand some words and concepts without similar cultural frames of reference. We’re using a variation of the educational programs we set up for Lt. Uhura after that damned floating vacuum cleaner Nomad wiped her memory.”

“Computer access?” Kirk felt a small jab of alarm that he knew was irrational. But after Khan….

Giotto spoke up. “Limited, Captain. She’s has an isolated terminal with extremely limited access. The educational materials, entertainment, games, books, that sort of thing. I had Lt. Uhura ensure it was secure, and that every keystroke is recorded. However, as Doctor McCoy has pointed out, she’s quite clever. I regret to inform you that she has made two covert attempts at unauthorized computer access, one to obtain classified data and one to obtain a prohibited item.”

Again Kirk’s stomach made a small, abortive jump, but he saw Giotto had that face he made when trying not to let anyone know he had a great hand in poker, and that McCoy was outright smirking at him. Sometimes I get really tired of playing the straight man, Kirk thought, but God knows we could use a little joy right now. “Ok. I’ll bite. What did she do?”

“Well, Jim, without those cameras protecting sick bay, there might have been all sorts of trouble. Here.” McCoy’s smirk had been upgraded to the one he used when he was about to make someone look like a real asshole. The Doctor popped another data cartridge into the viewer.

The scene again showed a dimly lit sickbay, with Sky sitting up in her bed and glancing furtively around. She hunched over her terminal and pulled a blanket over herself and the screen. The monitor in the conference room displayed her commands across the bottom of the screen.

“Computer. Where do they keep the chocolate?”

Kirk managed to keep a smile off of his face and maintain an air of mock-seriousness. “Your diligence is to be commended, Barry. And the second access?”

McCoy advanced to the next scene. Again, ship’s night. This time, Sky was perched on a bio-bed, clutching her rag doll looking around pensively. She then hopped to the next bio-bed, and the next. The scene switched to different cameras to follow her progress. When she ran out of bio-beds, she hopped to a counter in the main sickbay area. It was like watching child play “Plasma On The Floor.” All the while she was trying to watch everywhere at once for some possible threat. She snatched up a chair tossed it to the center of the room. A deep breath, then she jumped to it and from there to Doctor McCoy’s desk where she perched and typed in the Doctor’s access code. Again, the text began scrolling across the bottom of the conference room monitor.

“Computer. I need a mongoose.”

“Please restate the request.”

“Computer, please get me a mongoose.”

“Unable to comply.”

“Computer. Tell Doctor McCoy to prescribe a mongoose for me.”

“Unable to comply.”

“Stupid computer! Do you want Nag and Nagina to get me?”

“Please restate the request.”

“Stupidstupidstupidstupid!”

Mercifully, Giotto leaned over and cut the monitor off. Even T’Shia had a faint smile. She really must be at the end of her rope, Kirk thought. “Nag? Nagina? The names are familiar, but I can’t place them.”

Spock, as usual, was happy to display his superior knowledge of Earth literature while conveying a slight hint of disapproval that Kirk didn’t get the reference. “They were the antagonists in Rudyard Kipling’s story Rikki Tikki Tavi. Nag and Nagina were two anthropomorphized cobras who were defeated by a heroic mongoose.”

Giotto was fighting a losing battle against the giggles as he stared at a spot on the wall behind Kirk. “A number of the crew have been bringing The Subject books, Captain. Crewman Shaikatra has a rather large collection of ancient Earth classics and provided The Subject with a copy of The Jungle Book, among others. Subject apparently became convinced that there might be cobras on the ship and wanted a mongoose to protect herself from them.”

“Well. She must have been quite concerned to attempt something as serious as obtaining an… unauthorized… prescription for a mongoose.” Kirk was rather proud that he was able to keep a straight face on that one. But the laughter in Romanova’s eyes made it worth the effort. “Has she been warned of the seriousness of the offense, and what steps have been taken to protect her from … cobras?”

“Sir. I am pleased to report that the situation has been resolved. Ensign Garov has explained to her that Redshirts are far better able to protect her from cobras as they are part mongoose and part cobra. Pursuant to Starfleet Regulations, I consulted with the highest ranking civilian law enforcement authority present” -a gesture to Romanova- “and secured permission to deputize Princess Widdershins as a local militia exchange liaison, entitling the Princess to wear the uniform.”

Romanova nodded gravely.

Giotto continued, but his eyes were squinching up and watering at this point. “Ensign Garov crafted a field expedient uniform for the Princess to properly reflect her promotion. Crewman Shaikatra assisted, but demanded to be allowed to dye the Princess’s skin blue. And she made a little white wig for her…” Giotto shifted his gaze to a corner of the room before continuing. “AndIhadScottymakeheralittletoyphaserCaptain.”

Kirk actually felt a little dizzy trying to picture the beefy Tellarite and pissy Andorian shen collaborating to dress up a doll.

“Excellent work, people. I take it our guest is no longer afraid Nag and Nagina will get her? And is our chocolate safe?”

“I have created an appropriate dietary plan for the patient,” T’Shia informed him primly.

“Well, I think that takes care of everything then. Good work, everyone.”

“Jim, does this mean I can get rid of those damned cameras? And can we get the kid her own room? A girl needs her privacy. That, and Nurse Chapel is talking to her about Girl Stuff, and damnit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a babysitter for wayward Augments!”

“Ok, Bones, give me a couple more days to see what I can come up with. In the meantime, please ensure that our mongoose supply is secure. Meeting adjourned.”

It was past her bedtime, but Sky was still reading anyway when Doctor McCoy, T’Shia, and Mister Spock entered the sickbay. She was afraid she’d be in trouble, but she didn’t need much sleep, and there were so many words she could just have in the books people brought her and on the terminal. She often had to stop reading and look things up, and even then she often didn’t understand why some things happened in the stories she read. Why didn’t Pooh just not eat so much honey, and what were British doing in India anyway? Didn’t they have Britain? Would it be possible to ask Marilla if she could stay and Green Gables and be friends with Anne? Why do tigers talk in books, but not in The Real World? And where are the cakes that made you grow big? Being big would be nice, nobody could hit her if she was big enough to step on them.

She turned off her monitor and started to say she was sorry, but Doctor McCoy just smiled and asked how she was doing. Doctor McCoy said he liked talking to her, but he sometimes also liked telling her she should ask this or that question of Mr. Spock. Doing that always made him smile and smell happy. Spock just stood back and watched. He did that a lot, but he never smelled like he was going to hit anyone, and he had pretty ears like T’Shia, so she guessed that he was Vulcan too. That meant Surak had taught him not to hit people. Sky thought briefly that it would have been nice if Surak had come to her world and had taught her father not to hit people. No, that wouldn’t have worked, she thought. Her father probably would have just hit Surak. A lot.

“Sky, can you come out to my office with me? I want you to tell me about what you read today and we’ll see how much you’ve grown.”

“Yes, Doctor. Can I bring Ensign Widdershins?”

Another smile. Doctor McCoy smelled angry and got loud sometimes, but he never hit anyone. And she could tell he really liked smiling better than yelling. Although when he yelled at Mr. Spock, he smelled like he was smiling.

As she followed Doctor McCoy out to his office, Mr. Spock and T’Shia went over to the other end of the sickbay, to where the broken Vulcan girl was. She was broken because she really hadn’t been very good at hiding.

So Sky answered Doctor McCoy’s questions and suggested that a chocolate sundae from the sickbay food dispenser would be very nice and probably help her grow even more and read even better. Doctor McCoy smiled again and promised her one as soon as he finished taking his readings. But she could hear Mr. Spock and T’Shia talking. These people were all very nice, but they didn’t seem to understand how loudly they spoke. So she listened to them while she listened to Doctor McCoy and ate her sundae. Spock and T’Shia were both speaking, together.

“My mind to your mind… my thoughts… to your thoughts…”

They continued saying things like that for a few minutes, and then she heard the broken girl speaking too, very quietly. That was surprising because she never said anything. Or did anything. And they couldn’t get her to eat anything, so they put food in her arm which was very strange. She was saying the same things they were, and their voices kept overlapping and taking turns like they were sharing words as they said them.

“There is no shame where there is no crime… no it hurts it hurts to be…. There is no pain. I am Spock/T’Ren/T’Shia of Vulcan and I master my emotions… no no no I don’t want it I don’t want don’t be me don’t make me 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209 74944592307816406286208 there is no self, there is peace 99862803482534211706798214808651 3282306647093844609550582231there is no danger, there is rest, ψ(x,t) = cos(2π(px – Et)/h) + i sin(2π(px – Et)/h) there is no fear, there is tranquility, there is no pain, there is control.”

Eventually the voices became quiet and tapered off. The broken girl quit talking and then Spock and T’Shia were quietly talking between themselves in their normal voices.

“Her katra is still present, but is badly scarred.”

“Yes. But I believe she will recover eventually. The sooner she is in the hands of a Master Healer, the better.”
“Indeed. When we are in friendly space, I shall ask that the Captain contact Vulcan to have a medical ship meet us. Doctor? Are you well?”

Then Spock came to the door, he was helping T’Shia walk and he gestured to Doctor McCoy, who joined them. Sky continued to enjoy her sundae, but took the opportunity to pocket a couple of the chocolate bars Doctor McCoy kept at his desk to ration out to her. She pretended she couldn’t hear them talk because Tatiana had told her it scared some people when she was once asked to read the smallest letters she could and she glanced around the sickbay and then read “This basin is not to be used for the disposal of corrosive materials” instead of “ E O W F A R Q.” T’Shia looked very tired.

“Sky, back to bed with you now. Go ahead and get some sleep, we’ll find you some more books tomorrow, ok?” Sky nodded and went back to her bed where she pretended to go to sleep while she listened to the Doctors and Mr. Spock talk. They discussed vital signs and things Sky didn’t really understand for some time.

“How is she?” McCoy asked, his voice filled with both concern and relief.

“Resting. As I expected, I was unable to draw her out but I believe that I was able to convey the idea that she was now safe. I have suppressed the worst the memories that were tormenting her. Those memories are not erased, but will now perhaps be manageable until she is in the care of one of our Healing Sanctuaries. I believe she will recover in time.”

“That’s a relief. Alright, then, let’s get out of here so our patients can get their beauty sleep and we’ll see about a certain Vulcan Healer’s promise not to argue about getting some rest herself.” Sky heard McCoy walk quietly to the door of bio-bed area and she knew he was looking right at her for a long moment. She kept her eyes closed tight and breathed like she was asleep, she didn’t want him to be disappointed that she wasn’t asleep yet.

After they left, Sky got bored. She’d heard the broken girl speak, and Mr. Spock and T’Shia talking about her broken katra. Sky had never heard of a katra and guessed it was some sort of part on the inside, maybe one that only Vulcans had. She slipped out of her bed and padded over to the broken girl. Sky poked her. Nothing. They had mentioned that she was hiding in her head. Well, if she was hiding, she must be scared. Well, that was easy to fix. Ensign Widdershins could keep away the cobras, so Sky tucked her under the broken girl’s arm. Nope. She was still scared in her head. Sky thought for a minute. Ration bars always made her feel safe, so maybe they hadn’t given her the right food. After all, how could food in your arm make you feel safe? Sky retrieved one of her ration bars and broke off a piece, putting it in the Vulcan girl’s mouth. Nothing. No chewing, no swallowing. Nothing. Sky guessed that maybe she just didn’t like them. Come to think of it, Sky didn’t recall anyone but herself saying they actually liked them. Maybe chocolate would help. Chocolate made her mouth happy, after all. You can’t be scared if your mouth is happy. Rummaging in the pocket of her jumpsuit she got one of her chocolate bars and broke off a piece. After carefully getting all the pieces of ration bars out of the Vulcan girl’s mouth, she popped the piece of the chocolate in. Nope. Maybe Vulcan’s don’t like chocolate? It was a very strange thought, but their blood was green, after all. Sky retrieved her chocolate and ate it herself. Melty, but it still made for a happy mouth. She padded over to her terminal.

She typed “Computer: What do Vulcans like?”

Please restate the question.

Stupid Computer. How could something that knew so many words be so dumb?
“Computer: What do Vulcans like to eat?”

“While physiologically omnivorous, the Vulcan race follows a predominantly vegetarian…”

The computer kept blathering stupid things which were absolutely no help for some time.

“Computer: Is there any Vulcan food here?”

“The Sickbay food dispenser has been programmed to provide one traditional Vulcan dish. Plomeek broth is available under the menu selection ‘Comfort foods.’”


Sky went to the food dispenser and rummaged through the data cartridges until she found the one labeled “Comfort Foods.” A few moments later, she had a steaming bowl of plomeek broth. She tried some. Not bad, but then again, by her standards anything that didn’t come back up was good. She carried the bowl over to the broken girl. Setting the bowl down on the bedside stand, she picked the girl up and cradled her in her lap, holding her upright with one arm while she tried spooning some soup into her. Sky got more soup on the girl’s chin than in her mouth, but it was a start. She ate a spoon herself. Still good. The next spoonful was for the Vulcan girl, and this time she actually opened her mouth a little, so Sky got some more soup into her. After a couple more spoonfuls, the broken girl actually made a small, tiny sound and moved a little, opening her mouth to let Sky feed her more. But when the bowl was only half empty, she closed her mouth again and quit eating. So Sky held her while she finished the bowl.

Well.

Vulcans like plomeek broth, and it must be good for a broken katra. Sky thought about times she had things broken inside her. But Doctor McCoy had made it very clear that medicine was to be prescribed by Doctors, and not “young ladies too clever for their own good.” So any medicine was, as the Blue Girl would say, “A No-Go.” Sky looked at the broken girl she was holding. She wasn’t very heavy, (but none of these people were), so Sky continued to hold her.

She thought about when she was very little and some of the Younger Brothers had caught her. They’d beaten her, broken things inside her and then taken turns holding her down and hurting her. The Father and some of the Older Brothers caught them and were very angry. While she lay on the cold metal floor he had raged about, Punishing them. “Stupid gene-kludge filth! What good is a dead Breed Thing to me? Idiot baseline trash! This one’s too young to practice on anyway!”

She hurt too badly to even be scared as he beat them, tore an ear off of one, a thumb from another. Then one of the Younger Brothers tried to fight back, so the Father tore his jaw off. When he decided they’d been punished enough, he’d told them to crawl off to the Mender and then walked over to her. He had prodded her with his foot to see if she was still alive and she felt something in her side grinding. He turned to one of the Older Brothers and spoke to him.

“Come back in a few days and see if it’s still alive. If it survives, it might be strong enough to breed good sons.”

Some time after they left, the Breed Thing that used to bring her food came out of her hiding place and touched Sky’s hair. Sky had a very good memory, but this period was very confused for her. There was a lot of pain and blackness. But she remembered that the one Breed Thing had brought her handfuls of vat sludge, and carried water to her in her mouth. Then she had just held her and made soft sounds, and eventually the Older Brothers had come and chased her away, and dragged Sky to a Mender to be fixed.

So in the dimness of ship’s night, Sky held rocked the broken girl in her arms and quietly whispered and hummed the meaningless old sounds she remembered.

“Hshliiiiibaeee, doansaaaawirrrrr mamasgobiiiaaaa makinnnburrrr”

In Conference Room C, McCoy poked a finger at the monitor.

“See? I told you she was playing possum.”

T’Shia raised an eyebrow.

“An earth mammal which collapses and pretends to be deceased when threatened,” explained Spock.

“Ah. An apt metaphor then.”

McCoy smirked, and then became serious. “Did you hear what I heard? T’Ren was responsive, if only briefly.”

“Yes, Doctor. And it is testament to my level of fatigue that this treatment did not occur to me. We have been eating ration bars for so long that I failed to recall the merit of ‘comfort food’ in cases of emotional trauma. We must also provide her with other appropriate sensory stimuli. Incense, other Vulcan foods, tea, and perhaps music. This is a very encouraging sign.”

“Is it safe to leave her with Sky? The girl means well, but she might accidentally hurt her.”

“I believe she will be safe. On the Avalon there were some rather alarming moments when we could not find T’Ren. It seems that Sky was worried about her lying on a bed in the open. She had made a nest of blankets and pillows in a supply closet and carried her there where, Sky felt, T’Ren would be safer. Once I explained to her that it T’Ren was safe where she was, Sky stopped trying to hide her. It did not occur to me to warn her not to attempt culinary experimentation, however. I must rest.” The Vulcan Healer was sagging in her chair.

“Doctor, I must insist that you rest in my quarters. I shall make due elsewhere. You will find that Commander Scott has adjusted the environmental controls and gravity plating to produce a satisfactory simulation of a Vulcan environment. Furthermore, you will find incense, candles and other meditation aids to assist you.”

The exhausted Healer looked at him and nodded, McCoy saw an unmistakable glimmer of appreciation in her eyes.

“Thank you, Commander. Although first… I believe I would like to determine how closely your ship’s food dispensers have reproduced plomeek broth.

“Allow me, Doctor.” Grinning broadly, McCoy led them to officer’s mess.

[Sky Falls In Thunder]

3
Captain Kirk And The Curious Case Of the Creepy Redshirt Shen

I have a new headache, thought Kirk as he glared at the personnel file on his desk. He had an assortment of headaches to choose from as it was, but found his bounty seemed to have increased by one. There was the headache from paperwork, and the one from dealing with the Admiralty. Those started behind his left eye, quite distinct from the one which started in the bridge of his nose when Spock and McCoy were bickering. He had the feeling this one was going to rival the advanced category of headache he got when Spock and McCoy quit bickering with each other and ganged up on him instead. Being the captain of Starfleet’s flagship and its crew of over 400 people wasn’t all as simple as kissing pretty space princesses and neck-chopping hostile alien thugs despite what the holodramas insisted. If only things were that simple. I’d trade this mess for a nice simple brawl right about now, Kirk decided as he dug deeper into Security Rating Shaikatra Sote’s file. This isn’t going to be as easy as just knocking her off her sweet spot and onto her ass in hopes of getting her to pull her head out of it. I think this shen’s got Issues.

The Sweet Spot. Sometimes an officer or rating hit the single position or rank they felt perfectly secure and comfortable in. Maybe it was an assignment on a world which somehow clicked with them. Maybe it was one where their duties fit their strengths perfectly and let them shine without challenging them to broaden those strengths. Either way, the quarrelsome and creepy shen seemed to have found what she thought was hers, and had tractors locked on at full strength. Or so she thought. This one was going to be a bit more of a problem than the usual Sweet Spot Squatter though. Because the shen hadn’t just stumbled into an assignment she liked and decided to make herself at home for the next few decades, she’d been carefully managing every aspect of her career to put her right where she was. But Starfleet didn’t permit stagnation anywhere, much less on its flagship. Every officer and crewmen was expected to excel and grow, to lead, or to get the hell out of the way of those where willing to challenge themselves. Kind of like what you’re expecting the Admiralty to say to you sometime soon, isn’t it, Jimmy Boy? Particularly now you’re closer to the ending rather than the beginning of this five year mission… Kirk squashed the inner voice and tucked it away somewhere he could hopefully ignore it for just a little longer.

In terms of her assignments, he could just picture the spooky shen batting her eyes and saying “See? Isn’t this the place I can do the most for you while causing you the fewest headaches?” Except that wouldn’t fly in Starfleet, nor would it fly with James T. Kirk. He demanded all of his people put forth their best effort, not only for the good of the Federation, but for the rest of the crew themselves. Stagnation was not an option. If she wouldn’t show some progress, he’d have to ship her out to allow some other up and coming rating to advance to the best of their abilities.

Her test scores were all uniformly above average, a requirement for any berth in Starfleet, much less the Enterprise. But hers were just high enough to make her a plum for any commander who wanted a quality Security rating, yet not high enough to really make anyone think she was capable of more or try to encourage her to go to the Academy in pursuit of a commission as an officer. Not uncommon, but on a whim Kirk had actually browsed her test scores. In one category, she missed every 13th question like clockwork. In another, every 17th question. Often as not, the question she missed was far simpler than the ones preceding or following it. And the pattern continued through every category of the aptitude tests and entrance exams. Her written exams showed a level of meticulously crafted competence, but studiously avoided brilliance. Except for one optional topic: Federation Cultures and History. Particularly Earth history, of all things. During his second year in the Academy, Kirk had been assigned to teach Federation History to first year students and he quickly recognized her written work as the product of an intellect that wasn’t done justice by her test scores. In this one field her work was downright scholarly in depth and quality, yet witty and engaging and spoke of a passion for the subject and insight that was rather surprising in a non-human. He didn’t agree with all of her conclusions, but she did make some points he might have wished he had.

Kirk dug deeper, into her pre-Starfleet service record. She’d served with distinction in the Andorian Defense Force, and had attained a commission at an age young even among the militant Andorians. It hadn’t taken her long to qualify for transfer to the Imperial Guard… Just in time for the Imperial Guard to be stripped of its prestigious role as an elite special operations unit and relegated to a purely ceremonial, decorative function. Kirk thought about how he’d feel if he’d achieved command of the Enterprise just in time for it to be decommissioned and turned into a tourist attraction. To go from the proud few at the sharp end to standing at attention in a dress uniform all day for tourists to take pictures of would be heartbreaking for any soldier. Finally, she had no clan affiliation listed other than the ADF, which suggested she was an orphan or illegitimate (a rarity given that the logistics of Andorian reproduction took four to tango) and had been literally raised in the barracks, which would make the betrayal cut that much deeper. Well, that would explain the distrust for officers… for brass… that Giotto’s warned me about. It might also explain her determination to remain in the enlisted ranks. She had also just recently obtained Earth citizenship, although from what he could see of her travel orders she had yet to actually set foot on the planet. Her duty postings had conspired to prevent her from even taking any leave there, but she had been doggedly chewing on the citizenship red tape for at least a 2 years. Curious.

Moving on to commendations and reprimands, Kirk saw that she’d made a respectable collection of both despite her relative youth. There were some for truly conspicuous gallantry, the sort of acts guaranteed to win one a promotion whether one wanted it or not. Creepy as she might be, every commander she’d served under hated to lose her and Giotto had made it quite clear he had nobody he’d trust more, either on point or watching his back, (just not at cards). High praise from a security veteran with his experience. And then the down-side. Following each of those citations, there’d invariably been some incident requiring a reprimand that had prevented that promotion, or in one case had won her a demotion. A brawl here, a lewd comment to a visiting dignitary there, even one rather impressively orchestrated gambling ring which involved low stakes betting on romantic exploits among the ship’s officers. Kirk didn’t really want to think about that one. And then there was the collection of innocent spare parts which, could, conceivably, be assembled into remarkably compact and efficient still.

Scotty had commandeered that for “safety purposes.”

There was one serious incident, a fight with a Sciences department officer at her last posting. After reading the official reports on the incident he found he couldn’t really blame her, although what it said about her temper did concern him. The short form was that the researcher had intentionally underplayed the risks of his experiment and the native fauna involved and had gotten two security ratings killed and three more badly injured. To compound his error, he’d had the poor sense to try to publicly justify his actions by stating that the additional data was far more valuable than “a couple of hick redshirts. Besides, that’s what they’re for.”
She hadn’t jumped him though; rather, she’d gotten in his face and baited him into throwing the first punch. Then she hurt him, slowly, methodically, and, according to the witnesses, while wearing an expression of unholy glee. She had delivered a rather comprehensive demonstration of pain-points and nerve strikes. It wasn’t so much a “fight” as it was a vicious little shen slowly pulling the legs of off an ice crawler, or whatever small creature is was that a maladjusted Andorian child would do horrible things to. She’d paused now and again to let him get in a swing, then resume the hurting. It was quietly agreed that the lout had earned his beating and his sickbay resignation saved Starfleet the embarrassment of having to publicly court martial a man who’d needlessly thrown away the lives of his shipmates in hopes of getting published... But she had left an experienced, commissioned officer weeping and helpless on the floor, an act not conducive to the smooth running of a starship. So she had been disciplined, but because he’d swung first and because he had caused needless deaths and had then made several crude and provocative statements about the her fallen team-mates before the memorial had even been held, she’d simply spent some time in confinement, lost 2 grades of rank, and had to spend a great deal of quality time in anger management classes. Given her record, (and her previous captain’s explicit request) it was nothing bad enough to get her drummed out of the fleet or shipped to a dead-end assignment guarding boxes of ration bars on a backwater depot somewhere.

Shaikatra’s billet currently was a senior security position, one of Giotto’s team leaders. She had private quarters even though she was a grade of rank shy of actually being assigned them formally. Again Kirk dug deeper into the files, wondering how she’d pulled that off.
While private quarters were the holy grail of enlisted ratings, reserved for specialists and senior NCOs, there had been a mutual agreement among the other security ratings to allow her a room of her own. The other branches quickly learned not to dispute that. A technician in the astrophysics department had demanded other lodging because she said that Shaikatra finished every sentence she said in quarters with the phrase “in accordance with The Prophecy.” Garov, the Tellarite ensign, had complained that she snored and was “gassy.” An engineering technician who bunked with her asked for reassignment to standard crew quarters because she insisted she could feel the shen staring at her in the night. Through the top bunk. There was some grumbling in the other departments, but everyone in Security was happy because she repaid them by pulling extra shifts or voluntarily taking “shit details” normally beneath her rank. Another curiosity. People often traded favors and pulled strings to get private quarters, but Shaikatra approached the project like a military campaign.
Discipline issues and quirks aside, at the end of the day it came down to the fact that the shen had willingly, unflinchingly risked life and limb to protect his people on numerous occasions. And in doing so she’d left a respectable quantity of dark blue blood soaking into the soil of alien worlds. On some of those occasions, Doctor McCoy had to really hustle to earn his paycheck and put her back together again. Giotto was right, she was going to be a handful… but Kirk owed it to her to protect her, even from her own stubbornness. He jabbed at the intercom and paged Lt. Commander Giotto. While he waited for the Security Chief’s arrival browsed some of Shaikatra’s historical essays, this time focusing on one which discussed the use of period literature and music as a means of social analysis. He recalled that Bones had told him Shaikatra had given the gawky Augment girl a book of Rudyard Kipling’s stories, and he also remembered that Kipling was more known in military circles for his military verse and social commentary than for his tales of talking animals.

It should seem like I’ve got part of this little personnel puzzle solved, but it just feels as if there are some extra pieces that I just can’t find. I’m missing something. The quarters I get, but tanking aptitude tests, winning write-ups to counter promotions? The Sweet Spot or class prejudice is just too convenient of an explanation; she’s going way beyond simply providing a calculated display of mediocrity. Plenty of enlisted personnel had scholarly talents and aptitudes yet choose to serve rather than pursue them professionally. Being a history buff wasn’t going to cause anyone to badger her into leaving Security to transfer to research, so why so much effort to hide her light under a bushel? And how does she manage to creep everyone but Spock out? She’s not hostile, but it seems like she can selectively project an aura of spookiness with the flip of some mental switch. Still, like all Starfleet personnel she had been evaluated for psi talent by experts, and they came up with goose eggs. Tricks of body language? A natural talent at cold reading marks? Witchcraft? And however she does it, why does she bother?

His musing was interrupted by the arrival of Commander Giotto. The man looked tired; Kirk knew everyone in security was pulling long shifts to fill in for those who’d volunteered to bolster the Avalon’s depleted compliment. “Barry, when are you going to get some sleep?”
The Security Chief grunted as if to keep himself from saying “about the time you do, Captain” and took a seat in the chair Kirk gestured to. “When we’re back at the Yard with the Avalon I’m planning on taking a week’s leave just to sleep. ‘Til then, well, I’ve gone with less. We’re rotating the long shifts so nobody gets two in a row, but you know how it is, sir.”
Kirk nodded. He knew Giotto was pulling at least an extra shift almost every day to ensure all of his people got some rest. And he knew that short of a direct order, he wasn’t going to stop. Still, they weren’t in a siege or running fight, so tedium was really the greatest threat to efficiency and alertness at the moment. In friendly and known space Kirk would have authorized a temporary reduction in manning of some of the less critical stations, but with a cargo of repatriated kidnapees and a crippled ship to nurse along, he just couldn’t take that risk.

“So. About the incident in the transporter room. What do you think?”

Giotto looked Kirk in the eye without flinching. “Crewman Shaikatra was right, sir. Taking the time to explain what she saw would have been a mistake. The girl was in an absolute panic, and that Vulcan doctor was going to lose it if the girl did. Belaying your order was the appropriate action.” One of the things Kirk liked about Giotto was that when his people fouled up (which was rarely), he was on them like ugly on a mugato. But when they were right, he’d stand up for them against anyone, be they a planetary commissioner, Starfleet brass, or his own captain.

“I think your right about that, Barry. You saw the doctor in the briefings. The fatigue, visible expression of worry, stress, and even a smile or two. Doctor T’Shia’s not only physically exhausted, but she’s a full Vulcan Healer and that means she’s a high end touch-telepath who’s been spending months treating the psychological harm done to a couple dozen brutalized women and keeping that poor, scared Augment girl from going to pieces. Her own control was being pushed to its limits, and I added to the girl’s panic by greeting them with a room mostly full of heavily armed human males. Things could have gone very wrong, but your crewman prevented that.”

“Captain, you had no way of knowing we weren’t getting another Khan. As for preventing the situation from going south of cheese, yes, that was all Shaikatra, although Garov picked up in it pretty quick too. She spotted right off that the girl wasn’t the problem. Said ‘oh, the most she’d have done was peed a little and tried to hide in the corner.’ But she said that when Ensign Saunders started to step onto the platform, the kid started to panic and that Doctor T’Shia suddenly had… and I quote “that particular non-expression Vulcans get when you’ve convinced them the only logical thing to do is to kick your ass up between your antennae.’ I don’t want to know how or why Shaikatra pissed some Vulcan off enough to learn that one. “
Kirk grunted. There were a couple of times when he’d been on the receiving end of what happens when a Vulcan lost their emotional control. “Grinning rage tornado made of fists” pretty much describes the experience. The doctor might be petite, but she’d still be markedly stronger than the average human. And Kirk suspected that in defense of her patient, she’d fight very, very, dirty.

“That brings us to the problem. She’s earned a commendation. Anyone can follow orders… but knowing when to contradict a flawed order or having the moral courage to disobey an unlawful one are qualities Starfleet can’t afford to lose. The last thing we need is some future Kodos or Garth of Izar who’s crew will later say ‘I was just following orders.’ So. She gets a cookie. And what happens when our quarrelsome shen gets caught doing too good of a job?”
Giotto expression became pained. “She gets into fights. Or gets caught in bed with some diplomat’s son, daughter, or spouse. Or spouses, depending on the race. She’s been getting more creative. Captain, I don’t know how much longer I can run interference for her. Bureau of Personnel has been sending me nastygrams about her. Starfleet wants her to shit or get off the pot. Either clean up her act and start moving on up the ladder again, or they’re probably going to refuse her next re-enlistment. On the ground and in the heat, she’s one of my best people, but this is one area she can’t see clearly, sir. I can’t seem to get through to her on it.”

Kirk nodded. Normally, a wise captain allowed his department heads to handle all but the most extreme internal matters and personnel problems, but with Giotto’s blessing it was now appropriate for him to get involved. The fact that Giotto was asking for help said something about the intensity of the Bureau of Personnel’s nastygrams and how much of a priority he placed on keeping the shen on board the Enterprise. “I’ll see if I can get through to her, Barry. Odd bird, though, isn’t she? Does she always speak Standard English rather than relying on the U-Trans?”

Giotto nodded. “Speaks it, swears in it, and has mastered of the slang, both modern and vintage. Even when she think’s nobody’s listening. I encourage everyone on my team to pick it up so we can communicate if something ever interferes with our translators, but she had it down before getting here. Gets downright flustered if a human draws a blank on one of her historical references too. It’s like she’s not just studying to be an Earther, but studying to be the very best one she can. She’s also even been saving up almost all of her leave to finally visit Earth, takes just enough to bust up the odd bar on this or that Starbase we visit.” Giotto shifted, clearly a little uncomfortable with discussing the deeply personal matters of his team. “Captain, the way she talks, she reveres Andoria’s traditions and history, but modern Andoria is dead to her. She clams up on the subject and turns on the Spooky China Doll Stare if anyone pursues the issue. But Earth? She’ll go on for hours, like the big guy from that old book talking about the rabbits, except with more eloquence. It’s like she’s not just shopping for a place to visit or retire to. In her mind, Captain, I think she’s made Earth an idealized sort of ‘home’. Maybe even Heaven.”

Kirk chewed that over for a long moment. “Maybe that’s why she’s not visited yet. She’s got more leave piled up than I do. Like she’s afraid it won’t live up to her expectations, or that she won’t fit in…” That was the sort of insecurity and sense of isolation that could possibly explain the shen’s sassy and brash demeanor as well as the bizarre career throttling. “Barry, I’ll do what I can to get through to her. I don’t want to lose her any more than you do. For all her faults, she’s taken good care of my people, she’s… bled for them… and she’s one of mine whether she feels it or not. Now. How are our other guests doing?”

Giotto passed him a data slate. “Better. No concerns from a Security standpoint, really. The Augment girl is no trouble at all barring the odd unforeseen panic attack here and there and her habit of hiding food. There was an issue with some shrimp cocktail. She’s becoming quite the extrovert all things considered, now she looks at your shoes when she talks to you. As for the others, Ms. Romanova’s been pestering me on qualifying some of ‘her girls’ on phasers. Seems a lot of them have re-thought the Novy Pskov stance on self-defense and personal arms.”

Kirk took the data slate and made a few notations before signing the authorization. Romanova’s home colony of Novy Pskov had seen an increase in immigration from the perhaps too-civilized core worlds, and the most recently elected government had forbidden it’s police and militia from carrying anything other than stunners, barring an executive order by the planetary commissioner and a vote by the planetary council. The official stated position, Romanova had spat, was that “We wish our colony to represent civilized humanity.”
“Would it have made any difference with those Augments, Barry?”

Giotto’s eyes glinted with just a touch of anger. “For the girls snatched by those long-range transporters, no. But when the Augments did a full on raids of those homesteads, it might have. A little, anyway. Captain Granger’s report indicates that their numbers were low so they really couldn’t have maintained the raids as long as they did if each strike cost them even just a man or two. Except they got away scott-free every time. We know from Admiral Archer’s encounter with Augments way back when that stun doesn’t work well on Augments, further supported by the Avalon’s encounter with them. They could soak up a lot of stunner fire, and they moved too fast to get more than a couple of licks in before they were on you. Trying to fight them off with stunners must have felt like being stuck using water balloons against Klingon Marines or a pissed off Horta. I know we’re not supposed to judge different colonies’ rules, captain… but I can’t blame her for being pissed, Captain. She lost a lot of family and friends. And then… what happened to her after…” Giotto shook his head to dispel that train of thought.

“Give anyone willing the proper safety, maintenance and use training, Barry. Just run each name by Doctors McCoy and T’Shia to make sure they’re emotionally fit for this sort of thing, given what they’ve just been through. I don’t want any “accidents” by some poor girl who’s not thinking clearly. And see if we can arrange other self-defense training they want while they’re our guests. It can’t hurt to bolster their confidence and self-esteem. Starfleet is supposed to be politically neutral when it comes to the internal laws of Federation planets, so we’re not going to comment on those policies. But… I… wouldn’t mind seeing a purely tactical evaluation of the effectiveness of stunners in dealing with ‘alien pirates,’ based strictly on the non-classified data that’s going to be publicly available anyway. I suspect Ms. Romanova’s militia experience will make her a fine consultant on the matter, so be sure to see that she gets a copy when it’s finished. Something tells me she’ll find some interesting things to do with it.”

A faintly malicious eagerness flickered across the Security Commander’s face. Tatiana Romanova’s determination to go home and “take those bastards who kept us helpless and run them out of their palaces” was well known by now. At times he feared Chekov would be wrapped up in her revolutionary fervor and try to re-enact one of those old Eisenstein films he keeps trying to get everyone to watch. There was little doubt that she’d make life very unpleasant for certain politicians with her colony’s planetary elections coming up in less than a year. Just enough time for her to wade in and raise hell, not enough time for people to forget about the attacks or be distracted by some political legerdemain.

“Oh, Ensign Garov has some pretty tangy verbiage on that already, Captain. I think I’ll put him on the job. He’ll be up for Lieutenant soon, so another monograph will be a useful addition to his record. The Professional Development weenies just love that sort of thing.”
Kirk smiled inwardly at Giotto’s choice for the project. A positive Tellarite critique was more scalding than plasma fire, and this report would be anything but. After hearing what the kidnapped homesteaders had been put through Kirk was looking forward to seeing those who contributed to the disaster squirm. Kirk could respect a sincere pacifist, he found the writings of Surak to be both moving and inspiring… but dying for ones beliefs was one thing, while insisting other people also die for your beliefs was quite another. Kirk had seen too many lives thrown away by leaders more concerned with maintaining their smug sense of moral superiority than ensuring the safety of their people.

Starfleet would require highly detailed classified reports and probably wouldn’t spread the word Augments were involved, but a ship’s captain also had a responsibility to inform local populations of potential threats and to provide such information and training as was necessary to help the locals prepare for them. Novy Pskov boasted of its “transparent” government, so they surely wouldn’t mind if the non-classified version of Garov’s report were submitted and posted via open public channels.

“Just remember to let me read that before he publishes, I want to be sure we don’t spill any beans that Starfleet Intelligence would…” Kirk was interrupted by the chirp of Giotto’s communicator. Even as he was flipping it open, the intercom buzzed.

“Captain Kirk, sir, this is Ensign Rickert at the Security Watch Desk. You instructed us to notify you if there was any sort of incident with the Augment. Apparently she’s involved in some sort of emergency in the Officer’s Lounge. No further information yet, sir, but there are calls going out for Security and a Medical team. Teams have been dispatched.”

“On my way. Kirk out.” Kirk replied even as Commander Giotto was heading out the door, calling Garov and Shaikatra to the scene via his communicator. A good move, both were able to interact with the girl without making her feel threatened. If the kid was flipping out, they were more likely to be able to talk her down than anyone other than the Vulcan doctor, and unlike her, they were just off duty and not in an extended period of healing meditation. Kirk found himself struggling to keep up with the longer-legged security chief as they literally raced for the turbolift. Giotto had an annoying habit of “accidently” getting in front of his captain in situations like this. Granted, it was proper procedure, but Kirk wasn’t a “wait and let Security sort it out” type, of captain.

Once they were in the turbolift Giotto crowded the door so he would have a head start when they arrived. Kirk fumed silently but knew it was a waste of time to argue with him. Moments later they arrived at the proper deck and were again pelting down the corridor with Giotto bellowing “make a hole!” while assorted crewman plastered themselves against the bulkheads to get out of the way. As they reached the Officer’s Lounge on the leading edge of the Enterprise’s saucer section, the doors whisked open and Giotto failed to make the turn as his left foot shoot out from under him, sending him sliding into the bulkhead with bone jarring force. Without time to stop or change course, Kirk was forced to vault over the fallen Security chief and hope for the best. He landed in a crouch, ready to attack or defend and tried to take in the situation.

The Officer’s lounge had been thoroughly trashed. It looked like someone had set off a respectably sized explosive charge under the buffet that had been laid out for the evening’s improvised concert. Trays drinks and platters of appetizers had been scattered in all directions, spattering the walls and even ceiling with various drinks, dips, sauces, and chutneys. An ensign in Services was sitting in the middle the floor holding a towel presumably filled with ice to the side of his head while another was trying unsuccessfully to extract a pair of frantically kicking blue legs from a tangle of folding chairs, tables and music stands. Had some powerful alien entity created a giant version of Spock’s kal-toh set and sent it forth to devour unfortunate redshirts, this is pretty much what it would have looked like. As Kirk stared in bafflement, a rather forlorn slice of roast beef slid down the transparent aluminum of the floor to ceiling windows gracing the forward hull. He was momentarily gripped by a strong and inexplicable case of deja-vu.

Turning to help Giotto up, he saw another fuss in the rear starboard corner of the room. The Augment girl and Doctor McCoy where in a tangle on the deck. Ensign Saunders was waving a phaser about uncertainly as McCoy tried to wave him off. The girl was lying with her face pressed into the corner, her right arm wrapped around a stanchion and she was squirming and working her feet like she was trying to burrow through the deck. Her left arm was locked around McCoy’s waist and was squeezing hard enough that his face had gone to an alarming shade of purple. He was pushing uselessly at her arm in an effort to draw enough breath to swear properly, but he did manage to gasp to Saunders something that sounded like “Put…. thing…away…. Idiot.” Perversely, the sense of deja-vu grew even stronger. Seeing Kirk, McCoy began gesturing franticly at the windows. Garov and his security team picked this moment to come barreling in, Giotto and Kirk had to scramble to get out of their way.

Great. The last thing we need to do is panic her more, Kirk thought. She might break my doctor in half. “Saunders! Get over here and help me with Shaikatra. Garov, help the doctor. And someone find out where that medical team is.” With that, Kirk and Giotto moved to give the Augment girl as much space as they could. Garov surveyed the scene and scratched his chin for a moment before clumping over and sitting on the floor in front of McCoy. He took the Sky’s upper arm firmly in both hands and planted his feet on the bulkhead to either side of the purple faced doctor. With a grunt, Garov leaned back and began pulling but was unable to break her grip. He did however, loosen it enough for McCoy to suck in a few whooping gasps of air.

“Panic… attack… ‘gora… ‘gora… phobic.. Stupid… damn thing…”

Kirk realized what had happened and bolted to the controls that would bring the shutters down, closing off the view of a rather magnificent nebula. He then turned to tangle of furniture and its prisoner. The shen was barefoot and soaking wet and embedded to the waist in the collapsed stack of furniture. Kirk tried to step in behind her to help pull her out and almost caught the heel of a blue foot in his groin for his troubles. “Crewman! Knock it off! We’re going to get you out of there, but you’ve got to hold still for a second!” The legs quit kicking. Kirk moved forward and examined the mess. The first thing that struck him was that the rather nice azure legs went all the way up to a startlingly pale, bare … tan lines? Blue lines? Do Andorians tan? How does that even work? With an effort Kirk hauled his sensors north of the Neutral Zone and tugged the sodden uniform skirt down, giving the shen back at the least a scrap of her dignity. Gesturing for Saunders to start pulling furniture from the top of the pile he took hold of the trapped crewman’s hips. The crewman became very still, and a moment later he heard her muffled voice from the depths of the wreckage.

“Is it Friday already?”

The Andorian crewman was not just wet, but slippery and wet. Kirk couldn’t help but note that she smelled strongly of sandalwood and jasmine, a combination that worked rather nicely with her alien biochemistry. A glance back towards the entrance of the lounge showed what he’d missed before… a trail of bare, wet foot prints and spatterings of suds which explained Giotto’s fall. She must have been in the middle of a shower and the security call had gone out when she was lathered up. Come to think of it, her quarters were on this deck, and the sensitivity of Andorian hearing would have rated her a water shower instead of sonic. She had probably paused only long enough to grab her uniform and had pulled it on as she careened and slid down the corridor. Huh. Must have been quite a show.

Saunders and the Services personnel were trying to pull individual pieces of furniture off of the top without making the entire pile collapse, making the entire rescue more like a giant-sized game of pick-up sticks, with Shaikatra shouting assorted curses and incomprehensible bits of instruction when the pile shifted.

“NoNoNoNOOO YOU’RE PINCHING IT Aiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” Her voice became a keening howl that was frightfully painful. The shen started bucking and spasming which only made things worse. As Kirk tried to hold her still Saunders jammed an arm into the mess down by where he guessed Shaikatra’s head to be. The keening relented, and Kirk suddenly staggered back as the shen came loose from the tangle. Hitting a patch of suds he would have fallen himself but for the quick reflexes of Giotto who was able to catch him. Shaikatra was a mess. Her eyes were shot blue from shampoo running into them, and one antenna was bent and listing at an odd angle. To her credit she was still clutching an equipment belt with its phaser and ice knives. Kirk cringed inwardly… he knew enough about Andorian physiology to know that an injury to an antenna was about like getting a low yield disrupter blast to the groin while simultaneously getting a sudden and catastrophic inner ear infection. She was gasping and staggering in circles holding one hand to the injured organ while the other scrubbed franticly at her eyes. Meanwhile, the medical team had arrived and were debating what tranquilizer to use on the panicked Augment girl.

“Get me over… I can… I can help… get me to…” Kirk guided the unsteady but insistent shen over to the crowd in the corner. Rather than trying to pull Sky loose, Shaikatra simply climbed on top and wiggled her way to the corner until she could press her cheek against the side of Sky’s head. Kirk didn’t know if it was the tranquilizers, or the shen’s efforts, but gradually Sky’s grip relaxed enough for Doctor McCoy to be pulled free. The doctor lay on the deck gasping for a minute, then started prescribing a cocktail of medications for the terrified Augment. Garov helped Shaikatra to her feet and guided her back to Kirk. As the medical team began the process of pealing Sky loose from the stanchion, Kirk held Shaikatra steady while Giotto searched for an undamaged chair. Shaikatra’s blue-shot eyes met Kirks, her face the expression of someone having a sudden moment of complete clarity.

“She will fall… she will fall into forever…” Then the injury to her antenna must have caught up with her because she grabbed Kirks shoulders in an effort to remain upright. “Captain… I… oh… oh… oh no…”

Graduation, Kirk’s inner delinquent chimed in happily as he knelt next to the heaving Andorian, holding her hair. The second night of that rolling graduation party. That was going about like this right when those girls from the judo team showed up.

Later, after Kirk had showered and changed into a clean uniform he made his way to Sickbay. He found McCoy to be relatively unharmed, although the doctor was moving a bit gingerly. Kirk could hear the Augment girl snoring loudly in her cubicle, and Shaikatra a few beds over apparently trying her damnedest to keep up with her.

“Bones, how is everyone?”

McCoy’s face took a particularly sour expression. “Fine. No thanks to me. When I heard we were dropping out of warp for Scotty to swap in some new parts he’d fabricated for the Avalon, I had the brilliant idea of taking Sky to the lounge. Thought it would be nice to show her, well, to show her the sky and all that for the first time. She stared at it for about long enough to start to perceive the depth of things… then she panicked. Kept saying that she would “fall into forever and be lost. I should have seen this coming; she spent her whole life hiding in some bunker, after all. I screwed up, Jim. Anyway, things went downhill from there. She’ll be ok, once she sleeps off the dosage of tranquilizers we had to load her up with. She’s got one hell of a tolerance, Jim. The load we had to put in to her would put a normal person in a coma.” McCoy led Kirk over to where Shaikatra was sleeping.

“I managed to save the antenna, so I’ll only have to put up with her for a day or two instead of a couple of weeks. Captain, I need your authorization for something. Seems she’s got some sort of hereditary pigmentation disorder. Drops for her eyes, and she’s been using a topical to protect her skin. When we brought her in she was more upset about people seeing that than her bent antenna. Sometimes a genetic condition’ll carry some cultural stigmas, I guess. I think I can come up with a systemic treatment that’ll eliminate the need for that topical, but the regs list that sort of thing as technically being a cosmetic procedure so I’ll need your ok. It’ll do a better job of protecting her from ultraviolet light, and it’ll stop her from badgering me to help her get ‘all those hard to reach places.’ Shouldn’t be any significant side-effects, and I’m keeping her on light duty for the next few days anyway.”

“Go ahead, Bones. And be sure to put down that she’s forbidden from any more Full Contact Interior Decorating. So how are you doing?”

“Ribs are pretty sore, but I’ll live. Biggest injury was to my ego. Jim, if she tries to conquer anyone, you just tell them to run into the middle of a nice big room. Going to take a while for her to get over the agoraphobia. Another item for the grocery list. We’ll start gradually working her up to larger spaces, but it’ll take time.”

“Ok, Bones. I’ll let you get back to work.” Kirk headed to his quarters, considering the problem of his irascible and generally spooky Andorian crewman. Technically, she’d created a safety hazard by traipsing barefoot through the corridors of the ship leaving a trail of slippery suds, but her heart was in the right place and he was certain the embarrassment of the day’s events were discipline enough. Kirk recalled an idea floating around Starfleet regarding carpeting the decks of starships. There were practical advantages to the idea, but Kirk felt it would make the ships feel more like flying hotels than ships of exploration. Next, they’d be wanting to put paintings and potted plants in the corridors, maybe a day-care or something… He waved the thought aside and returned to the issues at hand. Pieces of the Shaikatra puzzle were starting to drift together in his mind.

Settling into his desk, he called up a historical file accessible only to a select few, the captains of vessels named Enterprise. After entering the proper authorizations, he got a cup of coffee and began sorting through Admiral Archer’s personal logs from the old NX-01’s early missions.

Shaikatra found herself back in the Officer’s Lounge where Doctor McCoy was leading Garov and a mostly Tellarite string section in a rather enthusiastic if discordant rendition of the Tennessee Waltz. Commander Spock stood to the side, solemnly ringing a cowbell every time McCoy swore. The lighting was gentle and the smell of magnolias filled the air. In the center of the room Captain Kirk and Sky were dancing a simple box-step. Sky was leading, which was for the best because try as he might, Kirk couldn’t see his own feet for the skirts of his lovely emerald ball gown. Wow. Doctor McCoy must have really broken out The Good Stuff for me, a distant part of Shaikatra’s mind decided. The rest of her mind, however, determined that part of her was pretty boring and told it to shut up. Shaikatra began digging happily through the piles of tribbles, because what the hell, there has to be an accordion in here somewhere.